Saturday, December 30, 2006

• Let it out!

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  Foul-mouthed festival goers tell priests to &!%@ tradition

  

  Cyzo (January)

  Even today when attitudes have relaxed considerably compared to times past, most Japanese workplaces require colleagues to address each other using if not honorifics, then at least polite forms of the language, especially when dealing with an elder.

  Most salarymen relieve stress by hitting the bottle and letting loose all their pent up frustrations, but fortunately for teetotalers, there have also been since ancient times festivals where people were given a chance to let loose with whatever language they liked with no threat of repercussions, according to Cyzo (January).

  One such Shinto festival is the Akutai Matsuri, held annually in late November according to the lunar calendar in the Ibaraki Prefecture city of Kasama.

  The festival starts with a chief priest and 13 tengu goblins dressed all in white parading along a steep path chanting and making offerings at small shrines along the way.

  Onlookers scream out obscenities at the parading group and try to snatch the offerings they're bearing, Cyzo says.

  The religious mob doesn't give in easily and wards off the marauding onlookers by parrying them with swipes of green bamboo.

  As onlookers outnumber the tengu, they invariably overwhelm them and snatch away their offerings. Tengu who lose what they were carrying are hurled to the ground while all around them scream out the filthiest insults they can come up with.

  Snatching one of the offerings is said to imbibe the bearer with the power of the tengu's spirit in an additional benefit to the therapeutic screaming out of foul language at the top of their voice.

  In recent years, growing numbers of English speakers have been taking part in the Akutai Matsuri festival, ensuring that shouts of "F**k You" and "Sonofab***h" have joined the traditional Japanese taunts of "bakayaro" and "Kuso Tengu!"

  Cyzo says festivities usually begin at around 3 p.m. and often continue well into the night as festival goers screaming swear words try to wrest the offerings over the shrine goblins trying to stave them off with their bamboo staffs. The monthly says the festival can get fairly physical and injuries are quite common, though in keeping with the spirit of the occasion it's more sticks and stones than name-calling that does the hurting. (By Ryann Connell)

  December 30, 2006

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  WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications. The Mainichi Daily News cannot be held responsible for the contents of the original articles, nor does it guarantee their accuracy. Views expressed in the WaiWai column are not necessarily those held by the Mainichi Daily News or Mainichi Newspapers Co.

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